Neptune Atlas

Enquiries

How to read a cargo enquiry

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A cargo enquiry is the e-mail on the other side of the tonnage circular. Somebody has a quantity to move between two places inside a window of dates, and is asking the market what it would cost. Every line in it is a constraint on which ships can be offered.

One enquiry, in full

This is a realistic dry cargo enquiry. The figures are illustrative and market numbers move; the shape does not.

CHTRS : FIRST CLASS RECEIVERS, FULL STYLE ON FIRM
55,000 MT 10 PCT MOLOO BULK WHEAT, SF ABT 48
1 SB ECSA (SANTOS / PARANAGUA / SAN LORENZO IN CHOPT)
1-2 SB CHINA (QINGDAO / RIZHAO IN CHOPT)
LAYCAN 12/20 SEP
FIOST BENDS
12,000 MT PWWD SSHINC LOAD / 8,000 MT PWWD SSHINC DISCH
DEM USD 22,000 PDPR / DES HALF DEM BENDS
FRT IDEA OWS BEST
MAX 15 YRS, GEARLESS ACCEPTABLE

Ten lines. They say what moves, how much, from where to where, when, on whose account the cargo handling falls, how fast it must be worked, what lateness costs and who is behind it. Any one missing is a question you must ask before you can put a ship up.

The fields, and what each asks of your tonnage

LineReadsWhat it decides
AccountFIRST CLASS RECEIVERS Whose cargo it is. The field most often blurred, and the one that says whether you have seen it today.
Quantity55,000 MT 10 PCT MOLOO A range, not a number. It decides which ships fit.
Stowage factorSF ABT 48 Cubic space per tonne. Whether the holds fill before the deadweight does.
Load1 SB ECSA One safe berth, on a coastline rather than a named terminal.
Discharge1-2 SB CHINA Up to two berths, declared later by the charterer.
Laycan12/20 SEP The window she must present in. The hardest constraint here.
TermsFIOST BENDS Who pays to load, stow, trim and discharge, at both ends.
Laytime12,000 MT PWWD SSHINC How fast the cargo must be worked, as a daily rate.
DemurrageUSD 22,000 PDPR What the charterer pays per day if she is held beyond her laytime.
FreightFRT IDEA OWS BEST No figure given, so they want you to bid.
CriteriaMAX 15 YRS, GEARLESS ACCEPTABLE Age limit, and confirmation that gear is not required.

Quantity, and why the tolerance decides fit

MOLOO is more or less in owner’s option. At 5 or 10 per cent, the two common figures, the owner declares the exact quantity within that band, usually a fixed number of days before laydays. MOLCO or MOLCHOPT puts the same option in the charterer’s hands. Some enquiries drop the tolerance and write a hard floor and ceiling instead, min 50,000 / max 55,000, which is a different instruction entirely.

The option exists because nobody knows the exact figure until close to the laydays. Bunkers, fresh water, stores and the ship’s constants come out of the deadweight, and the load port draught can cut the intake again. Whoever holds the option absorbs that uncertainty; whoever does not prices it.

For a broker the tolerance is what turns one number into a search. Fifty-five thousand tonnes at 10 per cent MOLOO means the ship must lift between 49,500 and 60,500, so a 53,000 dwt hull and a 58,000 dwt hull are both candidates. Written as min 55,000 the smaller ship is out before the conversation starts. Searching the headline number alone returns almost nothing. Quoting a ship on deadweight alone is worse: deadweight is not cargo intake, and a stowage factor of 48 will cube out some hulls before they weigh out.

A range widens the field, and somebody pays for it

Neither the load nor the discharge line names a berth. ECSA is East Coast South America, a coastline; the ports in brackets are the options the charterer may declare later, which is what CHOPT means. 1 SB is one safe berth, 1 SP one safe port, and 1-2 SB permits a second discharge berth. Ranges have their own vocabulary: USG, NOPAC, the Continent, the Med, WCI and ECI, Arabian Gulf. None is a place you can look up.

21,356

Ports in the register, across 218 countries. A range is none of them and dozens of them at once, so an enquiry cannot be resolved into a berth by lookup. The distance, the draught and the ballast leg stay a judgement.

Two things follow and they pull opposite ways. A wide range opens the cargo to far more tonnage, because any ship that can reach any port in it is a candidate. The option also has a price: an owner quoting into three ports in the charterer’s option must price the worst of them. Which dominates depends on how tight tonnage is. The reading does not change: a wide range means you probably have a ship for it, and a single named berth means check its draught, length and air draught first.

Laycan, terms and time

The laycan is laydays and cancelling: the first date is the earliest the ship may tender, the second is the day the charterer may walk away if she has not presented. A ship whose open window closes before the laydays begin is no candidate however well she fits, and the tighter the spread the fewer owners commit.

FIOST is free in, out, stowed and trimmed: the charterer carries loading, stowing, trimming and discharging, and the freight buys the sea carriage. Under liner or gross terms the owner buys the stevedores at that end and prices them into the freight, and because the owner then controls the pace of work, laytime and demurrage may not run there. Charterparties differ and the one in front of you decides it. A liner-terms freight and a FIOST freight are therefore not comparable figures, and treating them as though they were is expensive.

The laytime line is a rate, not a duration. 12,000 MT PWWD SSHINC is twelve thousand tonnes per weather working day, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays included. SHEX excepts them; EIU and UU decide whether excepted time counts when it is used. Divide the cargo by the rate and this enquiry allows about four and a half days to load and just under seven to discharge. Whether the two are added together, which is reversible laytime, or run separately changes who owes whom.

Demurrage at USD 22,000 PDPR is per day pro rata, and DES HALF DEM is despatch at half that rate for time saved. Some trades pay no despatch at all. Together those two lines state the time risk: a discharge rate the nominated ports cannot achieve means demurrage, which is fair if the rate is right and a dispute if it is not.

The freight idea

FRT IDEA OWS BEST is no figure at all: they want you to bid. A named idea is an anchor: it tells you what the chain believes the market is, which is worth knowing even when it is wrong. Freight is quoted per tonne or as a lumpsum for the whole cargo, and the terms line decides whether one per tonne figure can be set beside another at all.

An enquiry is not an offer

Nothing above binds anybody. An enquiry says a cargo exists and invites indications. A firm offer is different: named parties in full style, a validity time, and terms that can be accepted. Until then you are being asked what you think, and so is everyone else: the same enquiry usually goes to many brokers at once and sometimes to the whole market. No exclusivity is given and none is implied.

Which is why the same cargo can land three times through three chains in one morning, reworded at each hop, the laycan or the quantity blurred a little as it passes. Offer the same ship into two of those chains and the owner appears twice against one charterer at two different numbers, which usually loses the fixture and makes the commission chain a fight. So the first job on an enquiry is not to price it, it is to work out whose cargo it is. Where the account is withheld, duplicates give themselves away on the details nobody bothers to reword: the stowage factor and quantity together, the exact laycan, the discharge options and the demurrage figure.

What makes one answerable

An answerable enquiry lets you go to an owner without asking a question first. It has the cargo and quantity with its tolerance, load and discharge with the options named, a laycan, the terms, a laytime rate at each end, a demurrage figure, and enough of the account to know who you work for, even if only “first class receivers, full style on firm”. The two that go missing most often are the account and the demurrage rate, the two an owner asks for first.

An enquiry you cannot answer is rarely a shortage of information about the cargo. It is information about the chain it came through.

The next step is to compare those requirements with suitable vessels and available positions, the practical process of matching a cargo to a ship.

For desks handling this process regularly, a shipbroking platform can help connect cargo enquiries, vessel search and fixture activity in one workflow.

References

How to read a tonnage circularThe open-tonnage e-mail: the fields, the abbreviations that ride on the line, and why the ship's name is the hard part. Laycan: laydays and cancellingTwo dates doing opposite jobs: the earliest a charterer must accept the ship, and the latest they may walk away from her. Chartering abbreviationsThe abbreviations on a circular, an enquiry and a recap, grouped by where you meet them, and what each one commits you to. Matching a cargo to a shipOne cargo, five open ships and one real candidate. Which constraints are arithmetic, which are somebody's opinion, and why the shortlist is short. Firm offers, counters and subjectsAn indication costs nothing, a firm offer holds the ship, and a fixture on subs is not a fixture yet. The ladder from enquiry to clean fixture.

Neptune Atlas

Neptune Atlas holds a cargo enquiry as a record rather than an e-mail: quantity with its tolerance, load and discharge ranges, laycan, terms and the account, searched against the positions the desk has on file. Because the account is a field, the same cargo arriving through three chains reads as three enquiries against one charterer instead of three unrelated jobs. Every paid plan starts with 7 free days. A card is needed to start them, and cancelling before they end costs nothing.

Try 7 days free Ship chartering software for brokers What each plan includes